#why does (s)he always come in for cyberman episodes

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HES BACK!!!!!! 😄😄😄

THE MASTER!!!!!!! 😄😄😄😄

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Doctor Who: Ranking the Master Stories – Which is the Best?

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Roger Delgado looms large over the character of the Master, being simultaneously influential and something of an anomaly: Delgado played the role with a debonair front, but since his death, the character has been less urbane and more desperate, manic and violent. In fact the actor who’s come closest to Delgado’s approach is Eric Roberts, who plays an American version of Delgado’s Master until his performance goes big towards the end of 1996’ ‘The TV Movie’.

Each actor brings different facets to the fore, but after the character’s successful launch in Season 8 we get the tricky balancing act of the returning villain: We know that the character returns because they’re popular (indeed, the reason for their existence was the question ‘What can we do to attract viewers for the season opener?’), but in story terms, this makes them seem increasingly ridiculous. The Master, among all Doctor Who villains, seems especially keen to involve the Doctor. Why do they keep coming back if they’re always defeated?

In recent stories, writers have attempted an explanation for the Master’s behaviour, be it an unspecified insanity or a damaged friendship where each party attempts to bring the other round to their way of thinking. Mostly, though, the Master appears in Doctor Who for a simple reason: a lot of viewers find it fun when the Master appears in Doctor Who, and the Master seems to find it fun when the Master appears in Doctor Who too.

Overall the character has a solid record in the show. Fewer classics than the Daleks, fewer duds than the Cybermen, but a lot of solidly entertaining stories mostly lifted by his presence. Here, then, is my ranking of – give or take – every Master story from the television series.

27. Time-Flight

I’m sure there are redemptive readings of ‘Time-Flight’, and its flaws are more understandable in the context of its production (with the money running out at the end of the series and a shopping list of items to include imposed on writer Peter Grimwade), but the end result is poor.

To contrast Anthony Ainley’s performance with Roger Delgado’s for a second: Delgado always played the Master with a calm veneer, as though his nonsensical schemes were perfectly sensible. As a result, he seemed in control. Ainley plays the role as if they’re not merely sensible but clearly brilliant plans even though they strain credulity. They’re smaller in scale and this makes Ainley’s Master seem tragicomic. He loses control more, there’s a kind of ‘She’s turned the weans against us’ desperation that’s much more apparent in this incarnation.

‘Time-Flight’ is, despite its faults, a poor example of this. While the Master disguises himself as a mystic for no clear reason, his end goal is simply freeing himself from prehistoric Earth. Once he’s discarded his disguise, Ainley’s performance is largely underplayed (especially in contrast with ‘Castrovalva’, earlier in the season). While there’s some camp value in the guest cast, it’s not enough to rescue this from being dull.

26. The Timeless Children

The most urgent problem with this story is not the retcon, it’s that it’s simply boring television. The Doctor is passive, trapped in a prison of exposition, and billions of children on Gallifrey are slaughtered because the Master is furious that he’s descended from the Doctor (the former childhood friend whose life is intertwined with his own, indeed who is frequently defined against). This, for me, doesn’t extend logically from what we know of the characters or indeed the situation and turns Doctor Who into a grimdark slog. Not only is it lacklustre, it feels like someone has cyber-converted the show itself.

Sacha Dhawan (saddled with a Master characterisation usually reserved for when they’re clinging on to life in animalistic desperation) brings out the aggressive and violent side of the character to reflect his rage and genocide, is satisfyingly disparaging of the Lone Cyberman, and is working hard to liven things up. There’s not a lot for him to work with, though. This Master is not a dark mirror of the Doctor, he’s just here to do what the plot needs him to. Sometimes that’s what the Master is there for, to be fair, but usually in stories with much lower stakes.

You realise that the Master is only back because the story needed a big villain to destroy Gallifrey and tell the Doctor about the Timeless Child, and it couldn’t be the Cybermen (because of their other function in the series finale) or the Daleks (been there, done that). Based on the character’s interactions with the Time Lords (most obviously Rassilon in ‘The End of Time’ and the chaos he sows in ‘Trial of a Time Lord’, but Borusa was presumably the Master’s teacher too, and uses him in ‘The Five Doctors’), it’s not completely implausible that the Master would resent them, but the reasons shown thus far inadequately explain the character deliberately committing genocide. Whenever the Master’s been reset previously there’s usually been a clear and coherent motivation. In ‘Deadly Assassin’ he’s dying and furious, in ‘Logopolis’ his pettiness unravels him, and in ‘The Sound of Drums’ he wants to be like the Tenth Doctor. Here though, his motivation just poses more questions.

Things could improve. This story is incomplete and – like a Scottish football fan watching their team in Europe – hope lingers that it might be alright in the end.

25. The King’s Demons

After disguising himself reasonably well in ‘Castrovalva’ and ‘Time-Flight’, here the French Knight with the outrageous accent and surname ‘Estram’ is clearly the Master. His goal is to use a shape-shifting android to stop the Magna Carta being signed. The result is less exciting than it sounds. It’s an amiable enough low-key runaround with some good character moments for the regulars, but you’d be forgiven for thinking this was the plateau of the Master’s descent. Ainley, deprived of a Concorde crew to camp things up, gamely takes on that mantle himself.

24. The Trial of a Time Lord

As with ‘Mark of the Rani’, here we find the show using the Ainley incarnation more knowingly. Here he turns up in the thirteenth of fourteen episodes to interrupt the Doctor’s trial. This is something of a relief, because if there’s a consensus on ‘Trial of a Time Lord’ it’s that the trial scenes are interminable. Then the Master arrives on an Eighties screensaver and just turns the whole thing on its head, casually dropping huge revelations that take a minute to sink in. His presence has a galvanising effect, bringing to a head everything that had been stirring thus far in the story. His satisfaction with Gallifrey falling into chaos also ties in nicely to ‘The Five Doctors’ and his later actions in the Time War. The final episode, written in an extremely turbulent situation, doesn’t pay off this thread well (originally the Master was intended to help the Doctor in the Matrix) but that it makes sense at all is impressive given the chaos behind the scenes.

23. Spyfall

The reveal at the end of Part One, in which mild mannered agent O is revealed to be the Master, was exciting on broadcast. It came as a surprise because there’d been so little build up to it, and at the time it seemed extremely unlikely that the Master would come back so soon after their last appearance. In the end, the contrivance that reveals the Master’s presence is indicative of this episode’s larger flaws: as with ‘The Timeless Children’ the character motivations and plotting feel like they’ve been worked backwards from an endpoint. This is not an intrinsically bad way of writing if you have the time and ability to make it work, but here the episode breezes along in the hope you won’t notice the artifice (small things, like the car chase that doesn’t go anywhere, to larger ones like the Master reveal drawing attention to his ludicrously convoluted scheme that involves getting hired and fired by MI6). As it does breeze it isn’t dull, at least, but the promise of Doctor Who doing a spy film with added surprise Master really isn’t fulfilled here.

22. Colony in Space

Possibly the most boring interesting story ever, and one where the Master’s appearance doesn’t lift things. If anything, it implies the Master spends his spare time as a legal official (and to be fair to ‘Spyfall’, it does maintain this tradition of the Master sticking out a day job). Aware that the character’s appearance in every Season 8 story might become predictable, the production team decided he should arrive late in this story. This makes it feel like the Master has simply been added to pad out an underrunning six-parter (and there is a lot of lethargic padding here).

There are some interesting ideas, especially the tension between Doctor Who’s revolutionary side and its conservative one; on the radical side the story clearly sides with the colonists of Uxarieus in the face of the Interplanetary Mining Corporation’s attempts to remove them by force, with initially sympathetic governor Ashe shown to be naïve, while gradually the more active Winton exerts more authority and is proven right when he insists on armed rebellion rather than plodding through legal processes that would inevitably take the IMC’s side (the IMC’s leader, Captain Dent, is a timeless villain – calmly causing and exploiting human misery without qualms).

On the conservative side, this is a story based on British settlers in America and their relationship with the indigenous population. Here we have some British colonists under attack by British intergalactic mining corporations, and throughout everyone refers to the natives of Uxarieus as primitives. It is ultimately revealed that they were once an advanced civilisation, but the Doctor continues using the term. Indeed, he warns the Master that one is about to attack him, knowing the Master will shoot them. This latter example is absolutely in character, and we’ll see in other stories how the Doctor’s blindspot towards the Master is explored in greater detail (indeed, this story also has the Master offering to share his power and use it for good, another thread in a Malcolm Hulke script picked up on later).Considering how padded this story is, though, having no sense of empathy towards or exploration of the Uxarieans’ point of view is a glaring omission.

21. The Time Monster

In many ways ‘The Time Monster’ is crap, with its Very Large performances and a man in a cloth bird costume squawking and flapping gamely. In many ways ‘The Time Monster’ is good, there’s some funny dialogue, great ideas, and a fantastic scene with the Doctor and Master mocking each other in their TARDISes. In many ways ‘The Time Monster’ is hypnotically insane, and you can’t help but admire the way it earnestly presents itself as entirely reasonable; ‘The Time Monster’ straddles the ‘Objectively Crap/Such a hoot’ divide, and is in fact the Master in microcosm with its blend of nonsense, camp, and occasional brutality.

Delgado has now been firmly established as someone who usually lifts a story with his presence, the Master’s routine now a regular and expected part of the programme’s appeal. It’s cosy enough to somehow be endearing despite this clearly being crap on many levels. This is Doctor Who that is extremely comfortable in its own skin; on one hand this involves establishing that the Doctor’s subconscious mind being a source of discomfort for him, and on the other it involves five characters gathering round to laugh at Sergeant Benton’s penis.

20. Castrovalva

‘Castrovalva’ suffers from similar structural problems to ‘Logopolis’, in that the first two episodes are a preamble, and while there’s no lack of good ideas it does feel like the regulars have to go on a long walk to actually arrive in the story. This means we have a lot of good moments (‘Three sir’, ‘With my eyes, no, but in my philosophy’, and the Master being set upon by the Castrovalvans in a nightmarish frieze, as if he’s about to be pulled apart) but there’s little emotional pull as we haven’t spent time with the characters. The idea of people being created by the Master for an elaborate trap and then gaining free will is great, but we’ve only known them for about half an hour so the impact is lessened. The ponderings around ‘if’ in the first half could be better connected with the concepts in the second.

In contrast to the cerebral tone, Ainley is at his hammiest here. Sensing perhaps that the Master improvising an even more elaborate plan than his previous two is stretching credulity, and stuck with Adric and his little pneumatic lift (not a euphemism), Ainley goes big and ends up yelling ‘MY WEB’ while standing like he’s forgotten how to bowl overarm (extremely unlikely given Ainley’s fondness for cricket). He’s also started dressing up again, which is actually done well here but the knowledge of what’s to come makes this foreboding.

‘Castrovalva’ also connects with John Simm’s Master’s misogyny, in that when Nyssa tells him he’s being an idiot he can’t think of a reply so pushes her away, and that he creates a world where the women’s role is to do the cleaning (although that might be partly explained by Christopher Bidmead following ‘Logopolis’ with another world of bearded old science dudes).

19. The Mark of the Rani

In some ways a low point for the Master, but also a relatively good-natured story for Season 22. Here the Master is first seen dressed as a scarecrow, and chuckles at the brilliance of his disguise, as if the Doctor should really expect to find him hiding in a field caked in mud. His plan is to accelerate the industrial revolution so he can use a teched-up Earth as a powerbase.

It’s not that this Master lacks ambition, it’s just that his plans all feel like first drafts.  He also plays second fiddle to the title character, with the Rani clearly put out that he’s there at all. Ainley, who regarded a few of his scripts as less than impressive, wasn’t happy at being demoted, but this works for the character. This pettiness is part of the Master now, and so ‘Mark of the Rani’ can be celebrated for finding a tone and a role that makes sense for him, something that invites the audience to indulge him rather than take him too seriously.

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18. The Mind of Evil

The Master is cemented here as an entertaining nonsense. He has a multi-phase plan to start World War III which involves converting a peace conference delegate into the avatar of an alien parasite which has been installed in A Clockwork Orange–style machine in a prison, after which he will take over the planet. Delgado, as ever, plays this as if it’s perfectly straightforward. As with his debut story the Master bites off more than he can chew in his allegiances, and you get the impression he’s not totally serious about global domination and just wants to hang out with the Doctor. Pertwee is at his peak here, rude and abrasive, righteous and enjoyably sarcastic, but also put through the wringer by the Keller Machine (which the Master has apparently invented using the alien parasite).

For all the good work ‘The Mind of Evil’ does with the Doctor and the Master (the idea that the Master’s greatest fear is the Doctor laughing at him ultimately comes to define the character), and with this being a mostly well-made story, it does devolve into an action-orientated (I say ‘devolve’, your mileage may vary) story where the Keller machine is now lethal and capable of teleporting, combined with a Bond movie plot where UNIT find themselves transporting a missile and guarding a peace conference (far from their stated goal of dealing with the odd and unexplained).

There’s a satisfying clash between the horror of the Keller Machine and the sight of prison guards shooting and screaming at what looks like a Nespresso prototype sitting on the floor. This is a good tonal summary of ‘The Mind of Evil’ – a lot of grimness (horrible deaths and genuinely nasty characters) rubbing up against something enjoyably silly.

17. The End of Time

As with ‘The TV Movie’ here the Master get some new and largely inexplicable powers, suddenly craving food and flesh. What John Simm’s stories add is the idea that the Master was driven mad by the constant sound of drums. Here it is revealed that the Time Lords planted it in the eight-year-old Master’s head as a means of escaping the Time War. As with The Timeless Child reveal, this Chosen One storyline lessens the characters for some viewers, limiting the character’s free will and making them less interesting. Russell T. Davies is smarter than that here though.

What works well are the references to the Doctor and Master’s childhood, the brief suggestion that that Master would like to travel with the Doctor without the drumming, the Master and Doctor choosing to save each other and return the Time Lords to their war; the Master rejecting his appointed role of saviour, refusing to have his entire life disrupted. Including the Master here is a good move beyond hype, offering a warped reflection of the departing hero (the fact that the Master’s big plan is grounded in vanity is telling).

It’s a strange mix, because there are clearly great scenes in this story, but the dominant impression of the Master is now being able to fly, shoot lasers from his hands, and occasionally have his flesh go see-through. The latter feels like a call-back to his emaciated state in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ but lacks the physicality.

It feels not dissimilar to ‘Twice Upon a Time’, in that it contains parts of what made the showrunner’s work so good, as well as being a clear sign that it was time to move on.

16. Logopolis

Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the context of its original broadcast, that sense of a Titan of my childhood finally saying goodbye, but – besides a memory of finding the opening episode unnerving on VHS – I have no real sense of this story from a child’s point-of-view. As it is, I can appreciate the ideas in it – a planet of spoken maths that can influence reality (riffing on Clarke’s Third Law), the sense of the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration being inevitable, the scale of the threat involved and that it results from the Master’s attempts at petty revenge rather than a deliberate plan – but I can’t honestly say they’re woven into compelling drama.

I have few objections to silliness in Doctor Who, but I find it hard to get on board with something so ludicrous that thinks it’s incredibly serious.

There are the recursive TARDISes that stop because the Doctor has to go outside for the cliff-hanger, Tegan spending her first story as someone with a child-like fixation on planes, the exciting drama of Adric and the Monitor checking an Excel sheet for errors, and the stunning scene where the Doctor explains that the Master knew he was going to measure a police box by the Barnet bypass because ‘He’s a Time Lord: in many ways we have the same mind’ immediately followed by the Doctor’s idea to get the Master out of his TARDIS by materialising underwater and opening the door. This story thinks itself clever, but judders forward through a series of nonsensical contrivances before cramming the actual story into two episodes.

The first half is stylish nonsense, building up to the reveal of the Master chuckling to himself about ‘cutting the Doctor down to size’ – it’s then you realise that everything he did in the first two episodes was for the sake of a joke that only he can hear, and this pun kills several trillion people. To be fair, this is a brilliant idea, it’s just a shame about the slog to get to this point. The final confrontation is then less ‘Reichenbach Falls’ and more ‘Argument at a Maplin’.

The Master is well played by Antony Ainley in his full debut, and as a child his mocking laughter was genuinely unsettling. As reality unravels, so does he. If he’d killed trillions deliberately, and they knew of his power before dying, he’d be fine, but doing it by mistake without people knowing seems to break him. Mostly there’s the feeling of lost momentum with the character, going from a powerful symbol of evil that corrupted paradise to a man broken by his own banter.

As with Nyssa witnessing the death of her planet, there’s a lot of potential for character drama here that the show wasn’t interested in exploring at the time.

15. The TV Movie

As written, the Master here is a devious, manipulative creature who is willing to destroy an entire planet just to survive. This is extremely solid characterisation, matching what’s gone before. You can also hear Delgado delivering this dialogue (though I’m not sure how he’d respond to ‘you’re also a CGI snake who can shoot multi-purpose venom’).

The shorthand for this Master is Eric Roberts’ big performance in the finale, which does tend to blot out the rest of his acting. Full of smarm and charm, Roberts is mostly downplaying his lines as an American version of Delgado (indeed his costume for the ‘dress for the occasion’ scene was going to be like Delgado’s Nehru jacket), and his line delivery obscures the fact that the final confrontation scene is very well written up until Chang Lee’s death. It’s quite a good summary of the character so far: cunning, persuasive, visually monstrous, driven by survival, then ultimately camp and desperate.

While the Master and Doctor’s rebirths are very well shot, the movie would have worked better without regeneration so we could get more screentime with the new cast, and the final confrontation is the only time the Doctor and Master get to actually talk, which means we only get a broad brushstrokes version of their relationship. Nonetheless the ‘What do you know of last chances?’ ‘More than you’ exchange is fantastic.

14. The Claws of Axos

Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s debut script for the show is busy and full of nightmare-fuel for the viewer, with the Master (who wasn’t in earlier drafts) put into uneasy alliances with UNIT and the Doctor. Briefly he fulfils the role of UNIT’s Chief Scientific Advisor, which is inspired, showing through his interactions with the Brigadier how alike he and the Doctor are.

The first story in which the Master is just grifting and trying to survive rather than being halfway through a devious plan. ‘The Claws of Axos’ wisely tries something different with the Master in the midst of an enjoyably garish romp (Doctor Who will never have this colour palette ever again). There’s some effective body horror, tinges of psychedelia, and a hokey American accent.  

It’s all over the place this one, but barrels along with glee and feels like the Pertwee era has relaxed into a lighter mood, albeit one where people are still electrocuted and turned into orange beansprout monsters.

13. Terror of the Autons

We are immediately told that the Master is dangerous, but also not to take him too seriously: one of the first things he does in Doctor Who is kidnap a circus in order to raid a museum.

And so the rest of the story proves: a darkly comic (and famously terrifying) blast which sets out the character of the Master for the rest of the Pertwee era: the delicate balance between the ridiculous and the vicious. Delgado isn’t quite there yet in this story, not fully realising the comic potential in the character and playing things straighter than he would later. One thing he lands immediately is acting as if the Master’s plans are perfectly sensible, bridging the gap between animating murderous chairs/phone cables and suffocating people with plastic daffodils, so that they die uncomprehendingly as they claw at their face. 

Therein lies the appeal of Doctor Who, with one of its central tensions being between the mundane and the ridiculous, the cosy and the suffocating. This is exemplified here by a plastic doll coming to life and trying to kill everyone because Captain Yates wanted to make some cocoa.

12. The Dæmons

In which the Master is good-humoured and ostensibly pleasant while trying to summon a demonic alien being, accompanied by a moving stone gargoyle who can vaporise people. The show is well aware of the Master’s impact, to the extent that one of the cliff-hangers features him in danger rather than the Doctor or UNIT.

What his debut season has established is that the Master himself is mostly fun (indeed, often more fun than the Doctor), but the monsters that he brings with him are terrifying. This is true from his first story, in which he brings a barrage of nightmarish ideas to life. Bok, the aforementioned gargoyle in this story, absolutely terrified me as a child. Most of the accompanying monsters in the Pertwee era did, but by tapping into the paranormal and demonic this story has an extra frisson of fear.

I have nothing new to say about ‘The Dæmons’: it’s the first Doctor Who story to mine the works of Erich van Daniken and it does it well, the Doctor is a dick in it, the resolution with Jo’s self-sacrifice is weak, it’s an episode too long, but also it’s got Nick Courtney effortlessly winning every scene he’s in, which helps a lot.

11. The Five Doctors

This is a story that plays to Ainley’s strengths, and he delivers. No other Master is as good at looking pleased with themselves, so when the Master is having a mission pitched to him by the High Council of Time Lords Ainley’s face is priceless. He’s present, and enjoying himself immensely, disdainful of the upper echelons of the society he escaped.

Then, when he attempts to persuade the Doctors that he’s there to help, the fact they all immediately assume he’s trying to trick them makes him entertainingly frustrated. Terrance Dicks’ script plays to the former friendship between the two characters, and the Master feels more like his old self before the Brigadier dispatches him with a cathartic biff. His brief alliance with and inevitable betrayal of the Cybermen is something you can imagine Delgado delivering, while also highlighting the difference in the two incarnations. Delgado would say ‘Your loyal servant’ with confidence, and find the ‘driving sheep across minefields’ line drily amusing. Ainley feels venal and nasty in these scenes, more like a childhood bully trying not to get hit. That he ultimately does is a lovely pay-off.

10. The Sea Devils

A somewhat padded Pertwee six-parter? With much of the padding being fight scenes with lots of guns and stuntmen flipping everywhere? With the Doctor being rude to everyone? And a meddling Civil Servant, Jo being plucky and resourceful, and the Master allying himself with a group that betrays him? With Malcolm ‘Mac’ ‘Incredible’ Hulke subtly undermining the entire thing? It’s like coming back to your old local and finding nothing has changed while you understand it better than ever.

Trenchard, in charge of the Master’s prison, is a relic of Empire and friends with Captain Hart – the highest ranking Naval officer we meet – who is clearly sad when he is killed. this story may have been made with the co-operation of the Navy but Hulke implies an old boys’ club which the Doctor breezes into and disrupts (but he is no longer averse to the military’s involvement as he was in ‘The Silurians’- it’s not clear whether it’s his relationship with UNIT or the Master that has changed his mind here – is he now used to having military support or does he deem it necessary due to the Master’s presence?).

Hulke, being one of the better writers of character the show had at this point, draws out his characters extremely well and deepens the Doctor and Master’s relationship by mentioning their past in more detail (a lot of what Steven Moffat developed in Series 8 – 10 was inspired by Hulke). Delgado briefly departs from the cosiness of this story by snapping in rage at a guard he’s attacking, letting the affable façade drop just for a second to show the fury beneath it all. It’s a small moment, but it’s something that will be built on for many years to come.

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9. Frontier in Space

In some ways, this is just a ridiculously long pre-credits sequence for ‘Planet of the Daleks’, but there’s just something incredibly endearing about Doctor Who attempting a space opera, complete with hyperdrives and space walks. The genius move is giving it to Malcolm Hulke, who fleshes out his characters more than most and manages to use genre cliches to achieve this. There’s a great gag where the Doctor tries to convince the Earth authorities that a war with the Draconians is being engineered, only to be captured by the Draconians who put him through the exact same rigmarole.

This is also Roger Delgado’s final story before his tragic death, and he arrives delightfully, walking into Jo’s prison cell and saying ‘Let me take you away from all this’. He’s also, after ‘Colony in Space’, taken another day job, this time as a commissioner from Sirius IV. Hulke is clearly determined to explain what the character gets up to on his days off, and the repetition both underlines how static the character has been (especially in contrast to Jo Grant) but also functions as something of a last hurrah.

The dialogue is absolutely superb throughout, which is ideal because not a lot actually happens in this story. However it doesn’t really matter because Jo, the Doctor and the Master are so established that it’s great fun watching them all riff off each other, with Jo resisting the Master’s hypnotism and going on a weary semi-ironic monologue about her day-to-day life at UNIT, the Doctor having a whale of time with political prisoners, and the Master dropping bon mots left, right and centre. There’s a lot of great lines here, so I don’t really mind the repeated capture/escape/capture padding because everyone’s having such fun that it’s just a joy spending time with them.

8. The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar

Opening a series with a character piece semi-sequel to a 1975 story shouldn’t work this well, however there’s definitely a sense of offering up shiny things to distract us from setting up other stories. The ending also happens in something of a rush. Nonetheless, I’m a big fan.

This story is interesting in terms of how inward looking it is. All the components involved have been established since 2005 and are explained in-story, but it’s still a demand that can limit the audience. So while I like this story, it does rather confirm that ultimately, making Doctor Who that’s right up my street isn’t a valid long-term strategy. However, if you are going to do a story steeped in lore, this is a good way of doing it: using the past as a foundation rather than trying to recreate it. Here Steven Moffat builds a lot: the Twelfth Doctor’s character softens based on his past few stories, Missy and Davros return and their relationships with the Doctor are explored, the actual experience of being a Dalek is expanded on (Rob Shearman’s ‘Dalek’ novelisation goes further if you’re into that), and the Hybrid arc is set up.

Previously in a ‘Ranking the Dalek Stories’ article I mentioned how ‘Into the Dalek’ felt like a story needed to establish that series’ themes, and didn’t do enough to integrate this with a good Dalek story. Here, though, the themes are woven more subtly in the episodes and less so in their titles. They’re also more interesting ones than ‘Fellas, is it bad to hate genocidal cyborgs?’

In the swirl of character building we have Missy essentially being the Doctor, exploring Skaro with her companion. Clara takes this role and has a terrible time as a result. As with the Doctor’s conversation with Davros, this highlights uncomfortable similarities: yes, Clara is literally pushed into danger while Missy has a secret plan for her, but it’s not like the Doctor hasn’t done similar over the years.

7. Planet of Fire

Considering all the tasks it has to do (introduce a new companion, write out two existing companions, using Lanzarote for location filming, and provide a potential exit for Anthony Ainley’s Master), ‘Planet of Fire’ is ultimately rather impressive. It suffers from an uneventful first episode (roughly 80% setup and 20% dodgy American accents), but once the Master arrives it livens up considerably.

With the Master controlling Kamelion, a shape-shifting android, remotely Ainley gives different performances for the actual Master and the Kamelion-Master, the latter more controlled. He’s also having fun here (his little smile after Peri responds to ‘I am the Master’ with ‘So what?’ is great) The Kamelion-Master, in a black suit and shirt combo (which suits him better than his usual outfit), seems more pragmatic and violent. It actually works for Ainley’s Master to be less threatening than a robot version of himself. Bent on survival, this Master has a better motivation than usual and the writing is layered: when he realises he’s in trouble in the final episode he switches instantly to pleading for his life and futile rage as the Doctor stares, either unable or unwilling to help him. There are emotional beats like this throughout the story which makes it fit well with post-2005 Doctor Who.

The rest of ‘Planet of Fire’ – as with writer Peter Grimwade’s previous script ‘Mawdryn Undead’ – has a knack for character lacking in many Fifth Doctor stories. As well as being a strong outing for the Master he writes Turlough out well and introduces Peri as a flawed but brave companion who clearly had a lot of potential. These arcs all intersect with each other, as well as the religious fundamentalism story (watered down in development), producing clear emotional journeys and an underrated gem.

6. Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords

Delgado’s Master was very specifically an inversion of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor: both of them were geniuses, one was grumpy and rude and the other suave and funny. The rude one tended to save the Earth, the funny one tried to subjugate or destroy it. John Simm’s Master isn’t an inversion of David Tennant’s Doctor so much as a warped reflection – they’re both quick-talking, charismatic and alluring figures, but while this Doctor is dangerous because he doesn’t notice the power he has over people, this Master is dangerous because he absolutely does.

It’s worth noting on the character’s reintroduction that Russell T. Davies dispensed with the kind of low-key plan that is clearly doomed to failure from the start, and instead showed the full realisation of the Master getting what he wanted coupled with the most cartoonish version of the character we’d seen: Simm went bigger than Tennant, and as Ten is a dangerous enough figure already it made sense to exaggerate this. While some fans wanted another Delgado, we got someone building on Ainley and Roberts’ over-the-topness while still feeling in control of his plans.

The character’s return was also tremendously exciting on broadcast. The impact that ‘Utopia’ had especially was huge, and Derek Jacobi left fans wanting more after his brief appearance as the Master (Hey, Big Finish Twitter person: here’s your angle if you want to retweet this). After the endearingly dated urban thriller stylings of the middle episode, ‘Last of the Time Lords’ is a really bleak episode that doesn’t quite stick the landing: the idea behind the floating Doctor offering forgiveness rather than vengeance is good, although I’m not sure it’s realised as well as it could be, and there’s an extra fight scene that adds nothing and loses momentum. The Simm Master is kept at a distance from the Tenth Doctor too, mostly speaking through phone or radio. The aged and shrunken Doctor is a misstep in terms of limiting their interactions, though the phone call we do get includes some fun nods to slash fic.

5. Survival

Rona Munro writes Ace and people her age with more verisimilitude than the surrounding stories, and she brings that same level of characterisation to the Master. Here he’s struggling against the animalistic power of a planet and plotting to escape. Ainley commits to the savagery and relishes the opportunities to be nasty.

What’s especially well written here is that this is still clearly the Master of ‘Time-Flight’, ‘The King’s Demons’ and ‘The Mark of the Rani’ – yes, he’s desperately trying to survive here and that shows him as more threatening than usual, but what’s equally important is when he says ‘It nearly beat me. Such a simple brutal power’, and then immediately takes the Doctor back to the planet, now engulfed in flames, and tries to kill him. It has beaten him. He’s lost to it. He even refuses to escape (‘We can’t go, not this time’) and is ready to die. This is the last we’ll see of Ainley in the role on TV (his last performance in the role, from a mid-Nineties computer game, can be found on this story’s DVD extras), going out with the acknowledgement that this Master is a tragic figure, he’s out of silly plans and costumes, now all that he has left is the violence that was latent within him – previously seen in…

4. The Deadly Assassin

Writer Robert Holmes hadn’t written for the Master since the character’s first story, and since then the character’s sadism had been downplayed. Here, after the death of Roger Delgado, Holmes elected to dispense with Delgado’s calm and suave persona, with the Master now a Grim-Reaper-like figure, still hypnotic but now without any pretence of reason: a creature of pure spite. That moment of jarring rage from ‘The Sea Devils’? That’s on the surface now. This, combined with his design for life, makes his plan seem more vicious than usual: simply to survive he will set off a chain of events that will destroy Gallifrey and hundreds of other planets. We’ve gone from the warped friendship of Delgado and Pertwee’s characters to explicitly stated hatred here.

The story does feature Holmes’ main weakness, in that after the fantastic world building, dialogue and horror, it all ends rather swiftly with the Doctor physically dominating the villain. What we do get here, though, is an almost casual rewriting of the lore of the series in a gripping and atypical story (that some fans hated at the time), and the successful recasting of the Master. What’s more, the character can now be revisited as this nightmarish figure or as another more Delgado-like figure, his scope has widened. What no one was expecting, though, was bringing the Master back as an almost primal force.

3. The Keeper of Traken

I know what you’re thinking. Putting this story ahead of ‘The Deadly Assassin’ is madness. Well, that’s subjective opinions for you. I think it’s fair to say that ‘The Deadly Assassin’ is a more solidly realised production than ‘The Keeper of Traken’, but I prefer the ideas in the latter and so it’s slightly ahead for me (and the ideas are still well realised).

We’ve seen from his debut onwards that the Master arrives in a location or organisation and brings it under his influence (the village in ‘The Dæmons’, the Matrix in ‘The Deadly Assassin’), but here we see him corrupt an entire civilisation. What’s more, it’s a fairy tale of a place, reputedly somewhere ‘evil just shrivelled up and died’ (to which the Doctor adds enigmatically ‘Maybe that’s why I never went there’).

I’m not 100% behind the more mythic versions of the Master (such as Joe Lidster’s Big Finish play ‘Master’, which is a great piece of work in itself but not one I keep in my headcanon). This could be one of them, with the Master a being of such purest evil that he infects and destroys the fairy tale kingdom.

Instead Johnny Byrne’s story shows Traken with a fairy tale’s darkness and decay, begging the the question of how much of Traken’s fall is down to the Master and how much of it is due to their own complacency (Traken’s Consuls are old and bickering. The youngest is clearly an idiot. They seem distant from their people). It seems the Master’s arrival exacerbates the collapse rather than causes it. This level of power likely comes from the original script without the Master, the character fulfilling a role created for something new, but it still fits with the ‘Deadly Assassin’ version who plays long games motivated purely by survival and spite.

And he capitalises on a very human fear, that of Kassia not wanting her new husband Tremas to take over as the titular keeper so that she will barely see him again. The main weak point of this story is that Doctor Who was not in a position to really commit to the heart-breaking ideas in this story (technobabble yes, but not as much pathos as there should be), especially the Master’s abrupt takeover of Tremas’ body.

As a child I found the final possession scene underwhelming, but the bit where the Master takes control of the Doctor is chilling. You understood that something extremely serious was happening. Tom Baker, it must be said, is exceptional here, especially when he shames Tremas (who doesn’t seem too fussed by the possession of his new wife) into helping him.

This story has a rich setup with good motivations for drama, and balances this with a more mythic quality. This is a significant development for the character, to become an evil so pervasive it manifests as rapid societal decay. Fortunately if there are two things Doctor Who fans are good at dealing with, it’s symbolism in storytelling and change.

2. Dark Water / Death in Heaven

Missy is something of a patchwork creation by necessity. In some respects she’s an evolution of John Simm’s Master, a manic figure concocting season finale-scale schemes and building on the Tenth Doctor’s frustration that they aren’t friends. She also evokes Peter Pratt’s Master in terms of sadism, killing a fair few of the guest cast, including some unexpected ones (and for a while it looks like she’s killed Kate Lethbridge-Stewart). She’s also reminiscent of Delgado, not necessarily in Michelle Gomez’ performance but in the sense that she’s largely in control and is written and cast as an inversion of the Doctor (Capaldi is irascible, seemingly heartless and mostly contained, whereas Gomez buzzes with childlike energy and revels in cruelty). From here, Moffat starts building towards the ends of Series 9 and 10.

Two things separate Missy from other incarnations: firstly there’s Michelle Gomez, a unique performer who varies the size of her performance in interesting ways, and secondly there’s explicit vocalisation of past suggestions that the Master does what they do as a warped gesture of friendship. This makes the character suddenly and deliberately tragic and strangely relatable: we’ve all been in difficult relationships where we try to get someone else’s attention, but none of us have been driven to an unspecified insanity by virtue of a constant drumming sound implanted by the resurrected founder of our entire society. As an explanation for all of the Master’s behaviour it’s rather neat, while also trying something different with the season finale: the grand plan isn’t to conquer the world (as with ‘Logopolis’ a colossal death toll is a side effect).

It’s Moffat’s grimmest finale – atypically no happy ending here – but if it hadn’t worked then there wouldn’t have been such solid foundations for what followed.

1. World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

Series 10 is arguably one long Master story, as Series 1 is one long Dalek story, which is not only true but also a handy excuse for not wanting to watch ‘The Lie of the Land’. Missy’s story is initially told around the edges of the episodes, and as a result these short scenes are to the point and occasionally clunky while laying foundations for the finale. Fortunately the finale is superb.

We are shown the relationship between the Doctor and the Master as a tragedy spanning millennia: ‘She’s the only person that I’ve ever met who’s even remotely like me’, and so the Doctor’s hope that the Master can be the friend he remembers trumps Bill’s fears. And Bill is shot. It harks right back to the Doctor remarking – after all the death and carnage in ‘Terror of the Autons’ – that’s he’s rather looking forward to their rivalry. The Doctor has a blind spot where the Master is concerned, and it kills people.

It’s impossible to say how well the John Simm reveal would have worked if his presence hadn’t already been announced, but nonetheless he does great work as both Razor and a Master who represents pretty much all other incarnations except Delgado (not unlike the War Doctor standing in for all the original run’s Doctors in ‘The Day of the Doctor’). Steven Moffat builds on the way Simm’s Master delights in pure nastiness but continues to be cruel when there’s no joy in it for him. His is a Master abandoned by his people and his friend, very much feeling it is him against the universe.

In contrast, Moffat had been re-establishing the sense of friendship present between Delgado and Pertwee’s characters with Missy and 12. Delgado’s planned final story was planned to reveal the Doctor and the Master as two aspects of the same person, with the Master ultimately dying in an explosion that saved the Doctor’s life (with it remaining ambiguous whether this was a deliberate sacrifice). It feels like Moffat took inspiration from this, with the resulting story of a broken friendship and the cost of restoring it: Bill’s conversion to a Cyberman, the Doctor’s words – for once – cutting through to the Master, who tries and fails to escape her past. Part of her would rather die than be friends with the Doctor (as Simm’s Master also did in Series 3).

It’s spoilt slightly by Simm commenting that this is their perfect ending, which feels like it’s obvious without being spelled out, but on the other hand he does have a point. If you were going to kill off the Master, it’s hard to see past this as their ideal conclusion.

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[uozlulu]

Some mid-week poast "Spyfall Part 2" Doctor Who thoughts:

There's always an under-layer of direct dangerous from the Doctor to the companion(s) in Doctor Who. Earlier incarnations made it more blatant, but New Who hasn't really removed the notion entirely, though in recent years it's less the Doctor might abadon you and more you might get accidentally sucked into another dimension if you're not careful. Anyway, it's always there and we can kind of choose to ignore it if it's not the focus of a current arc or episode or whatnot.

"Spyfall Part 2" can be taken two ways: If you skim the surface it's basically Nazis are bad, the Master is bad, Master spent the last almost eight decades getting in and out of hijinks while living time linearly on Earth. You can imagine things like running from Austin Powers, getting caught up in one of those giant cults, waking up one morning to find Autons everywhere and whoops it's Delgado Master's fault, etc...etc... However, there's a second way to take it, in which you realize the first place the Master had to escape from was probably a POW camp in Germany or Eastern Europe since at that point, they realized if you put POWs from France in camps in France, they had a high rate of escape. He'd have also been separated out for being brown and for his military rank because the Germans wanted to keep groups isolated from each other to diminish risk of revolt and escape.

Which is why today I keep thinking about the Doctor and her companions, two of which are not white. Since the Doctor had no issue with disabling the Master's perception filter and handing him over to Nazis as a double agent, how much increased danger for her companions are there? Does the Doctor not understand or does she understand all too well? Not to mention how New Who handles characters like Mickey, Martha, Danny, Courtney, and Bill, especially Mickey and Danny, one who said he was basically the “tin dog” and the other who became a Cyberman. But again, it all comes down to is Spyfall meant to be taken at surface level or are we meant to see it in all its contexts and implications? Because if we're meant to see all the implications then I'm concerned for Ryan and Yaz especially since Chibnall wrote Spyfall himself, which means he either overlooked these implications or he might leave them unaddressed considering he also cast Dhawan as the Master for a domestic terrorist Master arc.

Anyway, in some ways it kind of puts me off series twelve, in other ways it makes me more curious about it. Which way are we meant to take it? How much danger are our companions in? What kind of series arc and finale are we setting ourselves up for here? How bad is it going to get? Is it going to address its problems in the narrative? Are we going to remain all surface level? Will we dig a little deeper?

Probably going to have to play the series by ear and see if we're given clues as to how it's meant to go. Which, honestly, either way is not good. If it's all meant to be on the surface and like kids who don't have enough history education the nastier implications will never be addressed, acknowledged, or meant to be considered, then what the hell. If we will eventually address the nastier implications, then that leaves me wondering why Chibnall chose to on in such a direction. Unless part of whatever reveal is coming is to show us that the Doctor and the Master really aren't that different nor are they that different or above Earthlings. But even then, the whole Nazi thing was such a misstep and so uncomfortable and wrrry...

Another thing to consider is that last series, Chibnall employed a lot of writers from varying backgrounds to handle appropriate topics like Rosa Parks and the partition of India and Pakistan. This series, we have several episodes that don't have titles or writers attached yet, but the writers we do know so far are Chris Chibnall, Ed Hime, and Maxine Alberton, all of whom are white. So, again, I guess I got to play it by ear. Won't surprise me if I bail before the finale but also won't surprise me if I see series 12 through tot he end only to be disappointed by the finale

All I keep thinking is when I was talking about Chibnall and fatal flaws before series 11 I was really hoping this consistent flaw with New Who would finally be put to rest, but here we are talking about racist plot points and treatment of characters again. 

[cwalshuk]

Doctor Who review - Ascension of the Cybermen & The Timeless Children

Spoilers! Obviously.

If you haven’t watched the ninth and tenth episodes of the 2020 series, then go watch them now. Seriously.

The first part of this two-part finale, does not work as a standalone episode. I’m not sure it really works if you haven't seen the previous episode, since the main villain first appears in The Haunting of Villa Diodati. And you can certainly argue that the cameo at the end makes no sense if you haven't been watching this series since the opening two-parter, Spyfall.

All that being said, Ascension of the Cybermen is a great episode. But it needs to be considered alongside its other half, The Timeless Children. So I will.

At the beginning of this two-parter, we get an ominous voiceover from Ashad, the part-converted Cyberman who terrorised the writers in the villa. He rightly dominates this episode, concentrating as it does on the tail-end of a Cyberwar on humanity. We are told that only seven humans are left, but we barely get introduced to them before their number decreases. That wasn't The Doctor’s plan, of course, having spent the time since the villa training the fam in the use of anti-Cyber tech. That it is all useless, destroyed by Cyberdrones, helps cement the Cybermen as foes worthy of a finale.

As the episode progresses, we follow Yaz, Graham and some of the survivors onboard an escape shuttle, with Ryan, The Doctor and the remaining survivors stranded in the war zone. We are also periodically shown the life of a man called Brendan, who grows up in 1940’s Ireland after being found as a baby. It isn't clear, even by the end of this episode, quite why we are popping back to see Brendan, which left plenty of material to speculate on during the week’s gap between episodes.

The Ascension of the title, it turns out, is Ashad’s plan for the Cybermen. We discover in The Timeless Children that he wishes to purge them, and the universe, of all organic material. That he uses religious imagery, and indeed emotes at all, is a clever twist on the Cybermen. Whilst the Daleks usually have no problems espousing their hideous ideology, the emotional inhibitor built into every Cyberman keeps their dialogue monotone, which risks tipping into robot tropes and becoming laughable. Classic series Cybermen were better at this, introducing various Cyber Leaders whose voices were, well, ‘Excellent!’.

The full mechanisation Ashad seeks is much further along in the real world than at the Cybermen’s first appearance - many of us walk around holding electronic brains, networked for purposes we barely understand, let alone have any control over. So if the idea of becoming androids holds less fear for us, we get the extra step of losing the last remnants of humanity left within the Cyber-casing.

That Jodie’s Doctor fears for her fam as vulnerable humans is particularly touching, given how many of her friends have been converted in recent series. Top of her mind, we can assume, being Bill, her companion before she regenerated from Peter Capaldi’s incarnation.

I was a little surprised to see Chris Chibnall’s era return to the Cybermen so quickly since their last appearance. But having had a Dalek appear after his first series in charge, and now the Master in this one, the show runner was always going to go for the last if the big three baddies at some point. Having said that, the speed with which he has had all three appear may have fuelled rumours that he was leaving the show - he's not.

Anyway, back to this two-parter.

Aboard the escape shuttle, Yaz and Graham try to keep spirits up amongst their group of survivors, and, as with those accompanying Ryan and The Doctor, we learn that these last humans are not soldiers by choice, being instead nurses, teachers, etc who have found ways to survive. The group comes into difficulty quickly, and make a desperate attempt to survive by boarding a Cybership.

Meanwhile, The Doctor and Ryan lose further survivors as they flee the Cyber forces, leaving them with just Ethan, a young man who knows little else but the war.

Both groups decide that their best hope for survival is a fabled ‘Boundary’, some sort of portal through which safety might be found. It is guarded by an old man called ????, who has seen many pass through, but stayed behind himself.

Between the shuttle group and this portal is Ashad, who boards the Cybership, forcibly converts some Cybermen to his cause, and begins to hunt the humans. They escape thanks to the skills they've picked up during the war, and Yaz and Graham’s encouragement.

They escape in Cybersuits, emptied, offscreen, of their converts remains, in time to stop the execution of Ethan. Thus reunited, ???? leads the humans and The Doctor to the Boundary, noting as he does, that it looks different this time.

Different, because Gallifrey is visible through it, in ruins.

And who should appear but The Master, ready to kidnap The Doctor!

Thus ends part one.

Part two, The Timeless Children, is understandably less enamoured with the Cyber plot, now that Sacha Dhawan’s here now. So, after a little light ribbing at Ashad’s preposterous plan, The Master miniaturises him.

That Ashad so readily shares details of his secret weapon - a death particle concealed in his chest - rather undermines the character’s build up, that his demise also shifts control of the Cybermen to the Master is perhaps a design flaw of this version of the villains.

The Cyberium works well in the villa episode, and helps explain how a part-converted Cyberman like Ashad keeps control in part one, but by the time it slithers into The Master, it is all but forgotten. I would be surprised if this new element of the Cyberlore gets another appearance in the show.

With the Cybermen dealt with, The Timeless Children can deal with some of the many story threads still left dangling.

The title one - who is the Timeless Child? - is the focus, but we are also treated to a return appearance of the Ruth Doctor from Fugitive of the Judoon, albeit from within Jodie’s Doctor’s mind.

Who or what Brendan is is almost glossed over, but makes enough sense, though I had hoped he was a new character in his own right.

According to The Master, who accidentally discovered the truth about the Timelords after destroying much of Gallifrey, the Timeless Child is a being of unknown origin, discovered as a child but then experimented upon by an early Gallifreyan. That the Child's only mother figure could be capable of subjecting them to such life threatening experimentation, simply to fuel her obsession, is frightening. Is it believable? Humanity experiments upon other animals in attempts to harness their secrets, and has experimented on humans it has first othered too. So it is not too much of a stretch to imagine a society like Gallifrey’s might seek to exploit something as extraordinary as the Child’s ability to regenerate. It could decide that it was necessary, even, given, say, the threat of war, or to be able to survive early time travel tests. It could find their actions shameful too, and decide to cover them up with a more palatable origin myth.

Before Doctor Who became a much more global property, the show often let viewers draw parallels between Gallifrey and the UK, particularly in terms of how power corrupts. As such, it is heartening to see further such parallels drawn in Chibnall’s era. The British Empire, and modern Brits’ varied reactions to its actions, have been part of the Brexit discussions, whether in ordinary households or amongst politicians. But Brexit still divides, so a filter is needed in order to get difficult ideas into our heads without too much damage. Science Fiction is great for this, so congratulations to Chibnall and the rest of the team for using it to do so.

With that in mind, the idea that the Brendan story is a filter for The Doctor, so that she is prepared for The Master’s last revelation, is genius. The Doctor is the Timeless Child. She is not a native Gallifreyan in the way she had believed, but a refugee, adopted, then co-opted, for the benefit of an elite. No wonder The Doctor is always running.

It is here that the Ruth Doctor appears, to console Jodie's Doctor that this new information need not discombobulate her, but strengthen her. With this, she can confront The Master, explain that he has not won, and leave him desperate to complete his next plan for domination.

He has used Cyber tech to convert deceased Timelords into a new deadlier race. They can survive even Cyber weapons, simply by regenerating within their casings. This is sickening, even for The Master, but The Doctor cannot bring herself to destroy him, and them. It is not her way.

Luckily, then that ???? reappears, ready to put right what went wrong when his resistance sent the Cyberium back to the villa in the first place. He will use the death particle, and destroy The Master and his new creations. The Doctor can flee again.

And too, probably, will The Master.

The Doctor, having already sent the last of humanity to modern day Earth in a random Tardis, uses another to jaunt back to hers.

The fam and the last survivors will want to know what happened, but how?

The Doctor, needing to process everything, does not immediately leave in her Tardis. Unfortunately, this moment of peace is disrupted by the Judoon, who swiftly imprison her.

Three ‘What?!’s later, the credits roll, and we are promised a return in Revolution of the Daleks. That should be fun!

[armageddon-generation]

Making an arc out of series 11 (and other fixes)

I DON’T MEAN TO HATE - I genuinely really liked this TARDIS team, Jodie has completely won me over and the episodes not written by Chibnall were great - but this series does have several frustrating Issues.

One recurring problem I see people having is that the finale didn't feel climactic because there was little build up.

A few ways to fix this :

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

Just improve Tim Shaw - alter his design so he’s not just a black robot-man - take the tooth idea and do something like the Sycorax?

Change the ball of electricity into an actual creature - then establish Tim Shaw’s abusive relationship with it, taking out his viciousness on this helpless slave, because he’s a coward

This mster/beasty relationship would give Tim more character and make him easier to hate

It also establishes the running theme of the Stenza altering/controlling other creatures - it gives them a distinctive ‘gimmick’ like Dalek extermination and Cyberman conversion, which we can expand on in The Ghost Monument, The Tsuranga Conundrum and The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

The Ghost Monument

Establish the threat of the Stenza - ravaged worlds better (show us the flesh eating water instead of telling us about it and have more time with the Remnants instead of those boring robots)

Do this by giving Desolation (which is out of orbit) short, irregular days (5 hours, 3 hours) so the threat of the Remnants is always there - build tension and character at day (the “Mum told me to jump” speech) and have scary chase sequences during the two night sections

The Stenza using Desolation to create weapons of mass destruction reminds the Doctor of the Time Lords' tactics in the Time War, (that's why she's so interested in the planet) and establish that Yaz wants to know what happened to the Doctor's people/family

One of the racers should've had their planet stolen, not just enslaved, to establish the mystery of the planets Tim Shaw is stealing

Show their desperation by having the racers actually compete and fight with each other, with Team TARDIS stuck in the middle. Both characters believe they deserve the prize because they've suffered and lost more.

Yaz separates them, directly paralleling her intro scene in episode 1 - from parking disputes to this.

GIVE 13 HER BIG MOMENT because I waited until literally the last line of the series to understand where she's coming from. 13 is the joyous explorer, she doesn't have time for wallowing in angst, there's too much universe out there to see.

Something like: "It's not about what you've lost, that doesn't make you better than him! All that matters now is what's ahead. What are you going to do if you win, where will it take you? Have you even thought about it? Because maybe, just maybe, if you stopped pitying yourself you could make something good from this. Yes, you're family is gone and I'm sorry. But just because they're dead doesn't mean your life should stop too. Move forward."

This helps Chibnall's 'Fresh Start' mandate because it establishes 13 as completely different from RTD and Moffat's Doctors (especially 10 and 12) who felt a sense of superiority because of their past pain. It also ties into Ryan and Graham letting go of Grace.

The TARDIS went to Desolation in the first place because it wanted to help the planet (remember she has personality) - 13 realises this once they reunite.

We've previously established the TARDIS can change the weather, and it's had thousands of years on Desolation to prepare calculations etc, so have a sequence at the end where they show off to the new conpanions and terraform the planet, reversing the Stenza's damage

Post - credits scene / stinger - while the companions explore the TARDIS, show 13 viewing the footage the TARDIS collected over thousands of years of the Stenza violating the planet - she doesn't look happy, but then Yaz calls her for a tour and she puts on the bright smile again.

Yaz

I think Team TARDIS in series 11 was meant to be split between the familial relationship between Ryan and Graham, with the standard swept-off-her-feet almost-romance between the Doctor and Yaz in the background. They didn't focus on Thasmin much because I think Chibnall assumed 'oh, we've seen this before'

SHOW THE GROWTH OF YAZ AND THE DOCTOR'S RELATIONSHIP. IT SHOULDN'T BE ROMANTIC (YET) BUT JUSTIFY THEIR DEVOTION TO EACH OTHER

Because Yaz is a police officer have her 'investigate' the Doctor's past - especially her family, as that's an important part of her character and theme in the series as a whole. Since Chibnall loves Classic they could mention Susan

This makes 13 telling Yaz about her Granny in It Takes You Away an important milestone in their relationship

Yaz to Ryan about the Doctor's family:

Thirteen's character

People complaining Jodie isn't unique enough kind of have a point, but the seeds are there:

I like the idea of 13 being easily distracted and careless ("I'm almost going to miss you." / "Hi Yaz, forgot you were there."). Her being slow to trust contrasts nicely with Jodie's infectious enthusiasm. Have Yaz's role be keeping 13 focused, grounded and on-track when she needs to be.

Also! I've seen the idea thrown around 13 is only acting all bright and chipper. It'd be really interesting if she prioritises Team TARDIS' emotional wellbeing over her own

This way we have parallel arcs - Yaz gets the Doctor to open up as Ryan gets closer to Graham

13 and her Sonic

13 is meant to be a tinkerer, but we don’t see much evidence of this outside building the Sonic

So she wears a tool belt

The belt is TARDIS-like (bigger on the inside) and 13 pulls things out of it like Mary Poppins’ carpet bag

13 pulls bits of scrap out of the belt and cobbles things together when she’s excited / nervous / talking (pipe cleaner helicopters! Catapults! Wind-up mice!)

This distinguishes her from 11, who also did a lot of hand-flapping and is already superficially similar personality-wise

More floofy/fly-away haired 13! It makes her seem more energetic, constantly in motion, which really suits her.

The popular headcanon is that the Sonic works randomly (one episode it can do things, the next it can’t) because over the years the Doctor has added so many features they’ve overloaded it. So now she’s got a new Sonic, 13 is constantly fiddling with it/adding new features

Address the NuWho Doctors’ over-reliance on the Sonic - 13 keeps expecting the Sonic to do things but because it’s new hardware, it can’t, and she has to solve problems on her own

A running gag where 13 goes ‘watch this, gang’ and the Sonic does something completely opposite what she wanted and now they have to improvise

In the finale the Sonic finally works properly and 13 uses it to beat Tim Shaw

Occasionally (in an episode opening) 13 makes weird machines without knowing what the fuck they do:

13: [holding up a small device] Does this look familiar? Do you know what it is? Neither do I. I made it last night in my sleep. Apparently I used Gindrogac. Highly unstable.

Yaz: Doctor…

13 : I put at button on it. Yes. I want to press it, but I’m not sure what will happen if I do.

Ryan: [runs for cover]

13 and Graham

In Series 11, 13 always seemed annoyed by Graham (“Don’t kill the vibe”) and never seemed to grow past it.

Suggest 13 is living vicariously by helping Graham reconnect with Ryan – the Doctor first started travelling in the TARDIS to connect with their grandchild, so this is 13 coming full-circle

13 notices how good and Granddad Graham is trying to be for Ryan, and as he grows braver she comes to really respect him.

Graham becomes her confidant – he’s the only one 13 shows her age to, and she helps Graham begin again: They talk about how the Doctor has had to reinvent and regenerate themselves again and again because the universe needs them – much as Ryan needs Graham. 13 has lots of experience moving past loss, and they support each other through the pressure of being responsible (for Ryan and Yaz respectively)

Ryan

Have the Doctor and Ryan's relationship develop - in The Woman Who Fell to Earth they suggested 13 would take a nurturing parental role for him ("That's the kind of thing Grace would've said") but it's not really built on. All the pieces are there (him being immature and using weapons in the beginning)

Ryan and 13 have a sibling-like relationship - she teaches him about life and the universe - have 13′s use of slang (skillz with a z) come from Ryan having fun teaching slang to a socially inept alien

also maybe a reccuring joke about Ryan going for a fist-bump and 13 patting his fist, that pays off by the finale

Does anyone remember Ryan and Yaz went to Primary school together? Capitalise on that. When Ryan talks about how his Dad left him in Tsuranga and It Takes You Away, make it explicit that she understands because she saw Ryan go through it as a kid, and remembers what it did to him emotionally

A common complaint about Ryan is that he rarely actually does anything - he just stands there and says "they're gone!" or "it's a spaceship!". So have this be part of his character. In the early episodes have Yaz be the most active companion (allowing her to develop!), with Ryan (nervous about his dyspraxia) in the background, and have him become more and more active and competent as the series goes on.

Episode Order

For this to work I suggest shuffling the episodes - 1, 2, 8, 4, 6, 5, 7, 3, 9, 10

10 60-minute episodes to fit the new stuff in and give the large cast more room. The Woman Who Fell to Earth (60 minutes) was Chibnall's best script.

This way series 11 gets the same screen time as the 12 episode Capaldi series

Instead of 2 trailers for the next episode (one pre and one post credits) insert a post-credits stinger hinting at arcy things

The Witchfinders (We’re Going on a Witch-Hunt)

Swap Rosa and The Witchfinders around. We can get the 'female discrimination' thing out of the way faster (it felt weird they didn't explicitly address it until episode 8). Yaz and 13 can bond over their shared oppression (this is the first time the Doctor realises what history is like for her female companions - for the first time, they are of equal status and must work as a team).

Also have Yaz, the POLICE OFFICER, be personally offended by the miscarriage of Justice in the Witch Trials, and defend the victims - relate it to her experience on the job (maybe touch on domestic abuse?) instead of the cliche bullying story

The villains being escaped convicts from a prison also links to Yaz's character and job - contrast her applying police protocol to the Morax (she never had a case this big at home!) with 13's "fuck it, time to wave the glowy science stick' attitude - Yaz forces 13 to be disciplined, 13 forces Yaz to think outside the box and bend the rules

Arachnids in the UK (Spiders in Sheffield)

Still episode 4 - this needs a complete rewrite IMO, but for starters make the Trump parallel less explicit and cringey

Address Yaz has left her job as a police officer behind - she goes into work (with 13 as her ‘consultant’) and learns about people disappearing - we meet the spider expert at the Police Station, (because Yaz’s  neighbour being the only victim AND working in that spider lab was too big a coincidence) 

The expert is being ignored because the disappearances are higher priority, so low-ranking Yaz gets stuck with her

The spiders have spread all over Sheffield, not just the one flat and all around Yaz’s building

Have Ryan, Yaz and the Doctor go to meet Yaz’s mum at the hotel while Graham is mourning Grace in their nearby flat

When the spreading spiders reach Yaz’s family, Graham goes to help them, showing how brave 13 has helped him become.

We now have two tension-filled scenarios:

A home invasion subplot where Graham helps Yaz’s family keep the spiders out of their flat. Use this to flesh out and make her sister and Dad likeable - Graham comforts them when they’re scared, calling back to Grace's last line "promise you won't be scared without me" - 13 has helped him!

13 and Co being chased around the hotel (PROPERLY chased - the spiders use webs to cut off corridors and herd them around like rats in a maze)

YAZ GETS TAKEN BY THE SPIDERS - this is the moment 13 realises how attached she is to her new friends. She and Mrs Kahn work together to go and save Yaz from the Spiders’ nest (eliminating that annoying Jackie Tyler “you’re endangering my kid” trope) while Ryan uses his music to draw the spiders away

13 gets to see Mrs Kahn’s maternal affection and we see her desire for family. Ryan’s music draws the Spiders back and saves Graham and Yaz’s family

When Ryan and Graham reunite it’s very emotional - Ryan saved Graham’s life - ‘looking out for each other’

Finally have the Doctor save the Spiders by using the TARDIS as an Ark, instead of leaving them to die - call back to Planet of the Spiders and drop them off there

Since she's at home, once they’ve saved everyone have Yaz do girly things with the Doctor (because they haven't been able to rest since episode 1) - maybe nail painting? Only 13 starts using the varnish as finger paint. Also! I like the idea of them choosing 13's earring together bc 13 has no clue about jewelry

Demons of the Punjab

This should be episode 5, because it's connected to 4 by Yaz's family and together they provide a nice rounding-off of the half of the series more focused on her

The Thijarians have had their planet stolen, not just destroyed (it would still kill everyone)

That way when we see the hologram of what happened to their planet we establish the threat of what will happen to the Earth if Tim Shaw wins in the finale

(the powder they have can still be the stuff left over afterwards)

Also it's weird that Yaz goes to see her Grandmother, who she discovers remarried, and Ryan doesn't react at all.

Ryan has nothing to do in this episode, and because we're putting Punjab earlier in the series, Grace's loss is fresher. Give him a moral dilemma: He wants to go back and see her when she was young (and with her first husband - implicitly rejecting Graham) like Yaz is seeing her Gran

After seeing what happens to Yaz's family, and seeing Graham's caring reaction to Prem, he follows 13's advice and gives up on seeing Grace again - he's content with Graham

He bonds with Yaz over the episode and warns her not to take family for granted. At the end Yaz takes him to meet her Gran in the present day ("I was lucky enough to know yours")

The Tsuranga Conundrum (The Good Doctors)

Have the medical ship be a war ambulance helping victims of the Stenza's conquest

The general on board has fought the Stenza

Cut her brother and the 2nd nurse, they're unnecessary - have the ship be understaffed because of the strain the Stenza are putting on the medical service, give the engineering role to 13

The asteroid field they have to fly through (which we should ACTUALLY SEE) is not just an asteroid field but the wreckage left behind by another missing planet.

Replace the P'ting. It may be cute but the vast majority of people thought it was ridiculous. Instead have it be a Stenza weapon left over as the ship is flying through an old battleground - it can still be small and destroy the ship from the inside out, but its design can be more threatening and it can be more sympathetic (it was experimented on/created to kill, it isn't evil)

13 tries to pilot the ship first but can't because she's wounded. She has to rely on Team TARDIS and delegate the usual ‘Doctor’ roles. She faces off against the tactical P’ting, trying to fix the ship as fast as it disassembles it, while Yaz runs around trying to catch the thing, and Ryan and Graham take care of the passengers

The sonic STAYS BROKEN so 13 has to do this all by hand

Once 13 is told the Stenza are still out there hurting people, introduce a subplot over the next 3 episodes before the finale where she's sneaking off at night to go and help fight them (without the others knowing, because they're too emotionally biased)

The next episodes (Kerblam!, Rosa) gradually shift the focus onto Ryan's growth as he becomes more active

It Takes You Away

Add 13 and Graham - now close friends - talking about grandkids, and put more emphasis on 13′s reaction to the abandoned girl

This sets up the Solitract turning into Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, instead of the frog at the end

You don’t require previous NuWho knowledge to know about Susan - she has barely been mentioned.

Have her be played by the actress from An Adventure in Space and Time, like David Bradley as the First Doctor 

This way we directly address the theme of grandchildren and family

The Solitract is a link to 13's childhood and family. It's also another omnipotent consciousness she can relate to (think 9 and Bad Wolf - "That's what I feel, all the time!"). Finding that and immediately letting it go must be traumatising

Have a quick scene of Yaz catching 13 crying, but she quickly covers up because Graham just saw Grace and he's distraught

Finale (Battle Phantoms)

When they arrive on the battlefield 13 accidentally reveals she's been helping fight the Stenza offscreen (which is how she knows about this battle - one of the ones she was too late for)

This lie infuriates Graham - she's been blocking his revenge for ages

BIG EMOTIONAL MOMENT

13: Maybe I am a liar, and I promised I wouldn't be, but that's because I know what it's like, Graham. To want to hurt the people who hurt you. How that anger burns like fire, like a supernova. And it took me so long to get over it, so long to move on. Whole lifetimes wasted hurting and hating. I didn't want that to happen to you. No one deserves to be broken twice.

This gives Graham a legitimate reason to go against 13 without announcing his intention to kill Tim Shaw like an idiot. It also plays up 13's hypocrisy, which was touched on in the original script

What was the point of 9 distress calls if they're all in the same place?? Use this pportunity to split team TARDIS up and showcase how they've grown as individuals before bringing them back together (Ryan and Graham, Yaz and 13) for the 3rd Act

Graham being on his own drives up the tension over whether he'll kill Tim Shaw - Ryan gets there just in time

Explicitly call back to the moment in The Ghost Monument when Ryan used a gun - highlight how far he's come because of 13, talking Graham down

Get rid of the robots, because they weren't in The Ghost Monument now, and they turned the intimate story into an action movie.

Over the series we've established the Stenza genetically engineer other creatures into weapons (the Remnants, the P'ting, the cable ball in The Woman Who Fell to Earth). Replace the robots with scary leftovers from the Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (because that title was irrelevant to the original episode) - Think the Hand Mines from The Magician's Apprentice

Have each of the missing planets throughout the series be named - that way when we discover the stolen planets in the finale there is emotional impact because their being stolen has caused so much suffering.

This way not only are the Stenza a lot more threatening because they are present throughout the series, there is more build up to seeing Tim Shaw again

Also, the subplot about returning the planets is more emotionally impactful - the Doctor is retroactively providing closure to lots of the side characters from the series

Finally the threat to Earth is much greater - the companions have seen what losing your planet does to a person emotionally, and they fear that

WHEN THE EARTH IS THREATENED CALL BACK TO YAZ'S FAMILY SO WE FEEL SOMETHING

Also the continuing thread of missing /lost planets could link to Galifrey, raising 13's emotional stakes

Multiple people have complained the plot thread about the planet attacking you psychically and erasing your memories went nowhere - when 13 and Yaz take those devices off they get slight headaches

Instead have the planet actually attack them - 13 and Yaz have to remind each other of their memories and their families - exposing Yaz to a rare snapshot of the Doctor’s lonely childhood on Galifrey

This gives Jodie the opportunity to do some SERIOUS DRAMATIC ACTING, and finally opening up about Galifrey to the whole TARDIS team at the end gives an emotional climax to her relationship with them, as well as the relationship between Ryan and Graham

The Fam line is cute, but we need ACTION to evidence this growth - this way throughout the series we’ve established how much family means to 13, how much she wants that, and Yaz saying “I’ve always liked fam” means so much because it means she understands 13 as a person

Resolution

Change how the Dalek got split.

Medieval humans killing a Dalek on their own is ridiculous and makes itr less threatening. Instead, have the Dalek be a scout from the Time War, looking to attack Earth to distract the War Doctor. The Doctor, furious, rushes over and helps the human armies divide it, to stop the Time War spreading to his second home.

We’re told this legend by the archaeologists, positioning the Doctor as a vengeful wizard. We can get a flashback with the War Doctor as a dark silhouette on a hill or something.

This makes the “it’s personal” stuff even truer

Use the archaeologists and dig site to expand on the Dalek race’s impact on humanity, because they’ve visited Earth dozens of times. I’m thinking wall paintings depicting the Dalek Shell as a Divine war chariot, and the mutant as a Cthulhu-like God

This way we’re really throwing Team TARDIS in the deep end - they are immediately aware of the number of times the Doctor has fought the Daleks, which is completely different to the rest of series 11, where 13 was encountering everything for the first time

Change the junkyard Dalek shell.

The Scout goes to a storage facility where pieces of its shell are stored. Now this place is owned by the modern incarnation of the cult we’ve set up who worshipped the Dalek in ancient times (their logo is the same symbol found on the wall paintings)

Instead of killing the gay (AGAIN), have the company staff welcome and exult the Dalek - only for it to turn around and kill them all, establishing its racial superiority complex. (This is something Chibnall glossed over - his Dalek wanted to conquer like anyone else, not exterminate)

The company has collected the remains of dozens of different Dalek models from invasions across the show’s history (we still have the parallel to 13 making her Screwdriver)

The Dalek reassembles itself not using Earth metal, but into a Frankenstein’s monster welded together from different Dalek designs (classic 60s, Imperial, Special Weapons, Time War, Supreme, Progenitor)

When the Dalek and 13 face each other this one Scout now represents the entire Dalek race, every type the Doctor has ever fought. The idea of it stitching itself together is also a nice parallel to Regeneration

Destroy the Dalek by separating all the different sections - use Ryan’s dad’s technical skills but don’t have all of Team TARDIS rush the Dalek without getting killed - them pushing it around immediately removed any threat.

Emotional Impact

Seeing the remains of all the Daleks the Doctor has killed at the storage facility and hearing the stories of the War Doctor makes Team TARDIS reconsider 13

Police officer Yaz realises she is devoted to a murderer, and considers whether she wants to get closer to such a person

To make the Dalek more impactful to both Team TARDIS and the new audience that has only watched Series 11, when Graham asks why it’s so dangerous have 13 say something along the lines of “the Daleks are my Stenza”

Graham realises why 13 stopped him killing Tim Shaw in series 11, and (considering his Dad must’ve fought in WW2) gains a new level of respect for her

Don’t have Ryan immediately forgive his Dad and declare that he loves him - set up that he’s willing to give his Dad a second chance as an arc for series 12 - the push and pull between Graham and Ryan reconnecting with his Dad

The Scout is trying to complete its original mission, bringing the Tile War to Earth - 13 has to  literally defend her freinds from the ghost of the War and finally let go of her violent past (personified by the War Doctor). She’s also letting go of the deified, Messiah-like version of herself (represented by the wall paintings of the Doctor’s battle with the Dalek) that RTD and Moffat loved

13’s arc is worrying learning about the Daleks and their toxic relationship will change the way her friends look at her, because she’s been trying to protect them from this side of her life (it’s revealed she’s been deliberately avoiding places she’s been before because she’s looking for a fresh start)

By now Ryan and Graham are getting along fine, they’ve avenged Grace’s murder and Ryan is now talking to his Dad. 13 worries everyone has outgrown her, and they’ll leave

Have a scene at the end where Yaz comforts 13 and assures her she won’t abandon her - 13 doesn’t need to save their lives for them to want to travel with her - it’s their job to save her. They are here because they care about her. 

This way we get a new emotional climax of 13′s emotional arc and reaffirm the status-quo for Series 12

Improving Matt Smith’s era here

[the-desolated-quill]

Death In Heaven - Doctor Who blog (Fuck You Moffat)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Remember when I said The Name Of The Doctor was the worst series finale in New Who. Turns out I was wrong. This is the worst series finale in New Who. And I do hope Moffat isn’t interpreting this as a challenge, trying to come up with finales worse than the previous year’s. How about writing some good shit for once in your career?

Dark Water was an incredibly bad episode, but Death In Heaven takes it to new, insulting extremes. It’s utter bollocks from start to finish. It’s a mountain of bullshit so rock hard, not even diamond tipped drills could penetrate it. It’s an entire hurricane of piss. It’s... It’s... I didn’t like it.

Having fucked up the Daleks back in the previous series, it seems Moffat is now determined to ruin the second most popular monsters in the show the Cybermen, and he succeeds with flying colours. Is there anything the Cybermen can’t do now? They can fly, they can convert the dead, they can create clouds of Cyber-pollen, and apparently every atom of a Cyber body contains a program to upgrade the human race. At this stage the Cybermen have become so over-powered that they’ve just become utterly boring, evading anything the Doctor throws at them by pulling another random superpower out of their arses.

Also, like I said in my previous review, why are they converting the dead? Why not convert the living like they usually do? And why, once they’ve been converted, do they just stand around doing bugger all? It’s a bit hard to find Cybermen threatening when they pose no fucking threat whatsoever.

And then, as if you couldn’t undermine the Cybermen anymore than he already has, Moffat decides to go in for the kill with Danny Pink. I’m sorry, but Danny the droopy Cyberman has got to be one of the most pathetic sights I’ve ever seen. He wants to erase his emotions because of Clara (which seems like an overreaction to me) and asks Clara to do it for him even though there’s no reason why he can’t just do it himself. It must be out of spite. That’s the only reason I can think of. Oh, but Moffat still wants us to think that Danny and Clara are the perfect couple as opposed to a highly dysfunctional and toxic pairing that would seem more at home on The Jeremy Kyle Show than Doctor Who. 

Also, even in Cyber form, Danny can’t resist chastising the Doctor even though he’s actually trying to help the ungrateful bastard. In fact there’s a lot of Doctor-blaming going on in this episode and I really don’t get why because, as far as I can see, he hasn’t actually done anything wrong. At this stage I wanted nothing more than for Danny to fuck off and die, and I thankfully got my wish, except it had to take the form of a stupid, heroic self sacrifice. This isn’t the first time the Cybermen have been defeated by the power of love, and it’s always been really stupid every time, but this has got to be the most nonsensical. Danny’s love for Clara reverses the Cyber conditioning? Are you seriously telling me that Danny is the only person in the entire world who has loved someone enough to want to save the world? And if that’s not bad enough, Danny gets not one, but TWO stupid self sacrifices when it’s revealed the Master’s teleport randomly only has enough power for one trip (bit fucking convenient) and so he chooses to save that kid that died in that war zone. A series worth of buildup for this cliched pile of shit? Cheers Moffat!

Since I’ve mentioned the Master (I categorically refuse to call her Missy), let’s talk about her. I didn’t think it was possible to be more annoying than John Simm, but Michelle Gomez somehow managed to pull it off. I utterly detested her in this. I’ve never really liked the Master anyway, but I swear the character never used to be this fucking childish. She’s weird, obnoxious and goofy for no other reason other than she’s ker-RAYzay. (seriously, is that the only way Moffat knows how to write villains? She’s basically Andrew Scott’s shitty version of Moriaty in a dress). What’s worse is that the only way to make her come across as even remotely threatening is by making the characters around her act like fucking morons. UNIT have met the Master before. They know how dangerous she is. Why do the soldiers guarding her not react when she very visibly activates her bracelet, breaks out of her restraints and puts on her lipstick? Why does Osgood, who has apparently read all the dossiers about the Master, get so close to her to listen to her whisper and not scarper when the Master threatens to kill her?

Also, what is the Master’s plan exactly? Why Cybermen? Considering these Cybermen have pretty much nothing in common with actual Cybermen, I can only assume they’re there for rubbish fanservice and that Moffat is too fucking lazy to come up with his own ideas.

Apparently the Master wants to give the Doctor his own army to prove the two aren’t so different. It appears Moffat is going for a Killing Joke vibe, but it doesn’t work because while Batman and the Joker are two sides of the same coin, the Doctor and the Master are so diametrically opposed that this whole plot point becomes fucking laughable. It has the same whiff of bullshit that Journey’s End had with Davros chastising the Doctor for ‘taking ordinary people and fashioning them into weapons.’ Like I said about that episode, there’s a world of difference between turning people into weapons and encouraging people to defend themselves. The Doctor is very much the latter, so spare me the ‘we’re not so different, you and I’ crap. Is the Doctor better than the Master? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY!

Yes, once again, it turns out this episode is all about the Doctor. That’s all this bastard series has been about. Characters talking relentlessly about whether the Doctor is a good man or not. It’s utterly tedious to sit through because we all already know the bloody answer. Hopefully the Doctor’s speech about how he’s just an idiot in a box with a screwdriver will finally put it to rest. Not that I’m praising the speech mind. Peter Capaldi does his best, but it’s badly written and stupidly over the top, plus it’s hard to really feel the emotional weight of this speech when all it does is state the fucking obvious. The Doctor isn’t a soldier or a hero. He’s just some guy. Yeah. We know. What, have you only just worked that out Moffat? Why are you boring us to death with shit everyone and their mums already fucking know? Can we move on?

If there’s one thing I hate more than Moffat trying to spin the bleeding obvious as surprising revelations, it’s the bullshit lies and fake outs. Why are the Doctor and Clara lying to each other at the end? What purpose does it serve? (Also trust Moffat for coming up with a pretentious bullshit reason why hugs are bad. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as this Doctor just doesn’t like hugs). What was the point of Clara pretending to be the Doctor to trick the Cybermen? That never goes anywhere. Oh no! Danny is going to be Cyberfied... oh wait. He’s okay. Oh no, Kate Stewart has fallen out of the aeroplane... oh wait, she’s fine. OMG, the Doctor is actually going to kill the Master... oh wait, that wasn’t an orange light. It was a blue light, which means she’s teleported, so she’s probably okay. Wow, the Doctor is finally going to find Gallifrey... oh wait. No. The Master was lying.

Like I said in my previous review, keep wrong-footing the audience and eventually we’ll get sick of the bullshit and stop trusting what we see. I mean look at Osgood’s death. That should have been shocking, but not only is she a one dimensional character that I don’t give even a sub-atomic particle of shit about and is clearly too stupid to live, the fact is none of Moffat’s characters ever actually stay dead, do they? Rory. River Song. Strax. Jenny. Clara. Nobody really dies in the Moffat era, so why bother getting upset about Osgood? She’s probably going to come back in the next series.

But the thing that angered me the most about Death In Heaven is the utter contempt and disrespect Moffat shows to classic series fans. And don’t pretend you don’t know what scene I’m referring to.

Cybermen are converting the dead. The Brigadier is dead. Moffat is an insecure, egocentric hack who desperately wants to stand out from the Who rabble. Take a random guess what happens.

I’ve seen bad Doctor Who episodes before. I’ve been pissed off by Doctor Who before. But never before has an episode filled me with such utter rage. Not even Kill The Moon managed that, and you all know how much I despised that load of garbage. I didn’t take the idea of the Brigadier being a Cyberman particularly well, and I’m not exactly proud to say this, but my reaction was quite extreme. I basically had a full blown screaming fit. I was so angry and so upset by this. I couldn’t believe Moffat would do something so fucking crass and so fucking disrespectful. Yes it’s just a TV show, but the Brigadier was one of my favourite characters in Classic Who and indeed one of the most beloved characters in the entire show. And when a talentless, arrogant smartarse like Moffat comes along and tramples all over those happy, nostalgic memories, I think you have every right to take it personally. This has got to be the most insulting thing Moffat has ever done, and if I wasn’t committed to reviewing the rest of these episodes, I think I can safely say I wouldn’t be watching this show anymore after that.

Death In Heaven is a fucking terrible finale to what has been a fucking terrible series. Yes some episodes had decent elements in them, but it’s largely been awful. Series 8′s only saving grace has been Peter Capaldi, who has done an amazing job in the role despite the material he’s had to work with.

Moffat, go flush your head down the fucking toilet.

[spaceymcspaceship]

twenty eight

the lodger

circa 2010

apparently this is the only episode in season 5 that is actually set in the year it came out??? like the other present day eps r slightly in the past or in the future

weird i love this show

in watching some of these eps for the first time i really enjoy seeing the doc do shit that i’ve had them do in fanfic and then clearly it was done on the show but i didn’t know that bc i haven’t actaully seen all of it? idk it makes me feel very much on the right wavelength even though making the doc build a sciency contraption out of household objects in their bedroom is not that hard of thing to guess the doc would do

the doc trying to be human is always a+ content

can we please use that telepathic trick again where he just knocks his head into craig’s bc that is top tier and i like to think that whenever the doc gets impatient they could just have that in their back pocket

i’m sorry the doc doesn’t have another name for the football team but introduces himself as captain troy handsome to the ship without hesitation 

night terrors

circa 2011

doctor who making ordinary shit creepy since 5ever

the episode was Good like i feel like there are a lot of takes on Nightmares and fear in this show but this actually felt really refreshing and interesting and not all rehashed

closing time

circa 2011

i completely forgot about this episode and how much of a delight it is

leave it to doctor who to do an episode that’s basically two men and a baby and a cyberman

there are too many good moments craig and 11 r underrated and i probably ignored them in high school bc i was too distracted by when we were going to see river next

speaking of which

river in academic robes is uhhh doing things to me

the wedding of river song

circa 2011

‘what happened to time’ ‘a woman’ HOW DID THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS STUFF

a wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff episode

river’s you are loved and by none more than me speech :’)

L E T  R I V E R  M E E T  H E R  W I F E

i genuinely can’t remember what happened to the silence arc...is this the last of it?

dalek

circa 2012

excited to go back to 2005′s version of 2012

why r we in utah again

the scene with 9 and the dalek is SO good like the reveal in the dark immediately into 9′s absolute viciousness and hatred and taunting and the no holds barred violence just holy shit eccleston 

god ROSE just ROSE

they did such a great job making the dalek truly terrifying

no offensive to classic who but daleks and cybermen r just not actually that scary by themselves they absolutely have to connect them to what they stand for

you would make a good dalek oof

i forgot how unbelievable this ep is def one of my favorite season 1 stories 

fear her

circa 2012

time to go back to 2007′s version of 2012

creepy kids has been a theme today

actually this plot is very similar to night terrors like a stray child of the universe who doesn’t want to be alone 

so many little rose/doc moments? her telling him to not eat the olives or whatever in the kitchen?? she points and he holds her hand in the tardis???

any actually canon relationship with the doc is an entire hour long sub-section in my Let 13 Kiss a Girl powerpoint

that ending is such cheese with the doc lighting the olympic flame and only this stupid show could make me still feel something with that because it’s so brazen and so doctor who

‘they won’t ever split us up’ my GOD rose u can’t just say that

the bells of st john

circa 2013

damn time is flying it seems i was just finishing up with 10′s present day which is Old nuwho to me and now i’m already onto clara’s present day which is Recent nuwho to me

i dunno why but clara genuinely not knowing about wifi is hilarious to me

okay when did clara’s theme start making me emotional?? 

‘you can always skip ahead to breakfast’ may officially be one of my fav 11 lines for personal reasons

so i totally see why clara immediately had a crush 

other than her first almost dying 90% of what they’re doing is like first date shit like drinking tea and talking to each other under the stars and zooming around london on a motorbike and getting breakfast together

wait when did the tardis interior change??? wut??? did i completely miss that???

rings of akhaten

circa 2013 (maybe???)

i love clara

i love everyone in this bar but i’m about to be on the clara train

WOW another line that i basically wrote in a fanfic not knowing it’d been on the show when the doctor is talking about how the elements were built in stars and then flung out across the universe i mean again not a stretch for the doc to say that but still

storiessss again i love one (1) thematically consistent show

just goddammit smith another killer speech and this time he’s just so tired

it does kinda bother me that if the god was the planet and they extinguished the planet then they just kinda gravitationally fucked up the entire system GUESS WHAT GRAVITATIONAL MASS WERE THOSE RINGS ORBITING U FOOL

whatever this is doctor the moon is an egg who

so much progress, and tomorrow i’ll have day of the doctor coming up!!

[yourstatusisnotquo]

Doctor who rant (it’s gonna be a bumpy ride)

(I am jet-lagged and haven’t checked this for spelling and grammar, and I can’t really be bothered to. So if you’re reading this, you’re getting it as one sum lump of rant chaos, so fair warning)

Holy shit, that was a bad episode. With a nearly insulting lack of understanding on the Master’s character. 

This is coming from someone who actually loves Missy. I have some problems with their character portrayal, but overall I enjoyed the build-up to this finale. And I love John Simm’s Master, so hearing that he would be in this finale was a huge bonus. Really, the Master is my all-time favourite tv character, so I’m pretty annoyed that they fucked this up so badly. 

From a general set-up point of view this was already a bad episode. The main plot of the finale (Hospital makes people cybermen, spaceship city, bill trapped for ten years, all of it the Master’s plan) has little to no relevance on the final episode. The Master’s part of the plan dissolves after an impressive THREE minues (not including the beginning farm scenes and flashbacks) making their contribution to the episode needless. The rest of it is a basic, standard, “Doctor gets into a situation so difficult that self-sacrifice is the only solution” set-up that we’ve seen before many times. 

Which means that the main points of the finale that made it unique (the master, the spaceship, the time differential) were of utterly no consequence. You could have made the same episode without any of those factors with hardly a change. Also, to finish off non-Master related points of stupidity:

-We just did a important-person-becomes-cyberman plot two season finales ago.

-Bill being a cyberman didn’t amount to anything? Other than to give her a way to die that made people less sad about it, and feel more like it was the right way to do things

-Was that water pilot lady really important enough in the show to play THAT much of an ending role?

-There was really no planning stage of the episode, no adventure where plans are considered (you know, the part that makes it fun)

-The space ship is never explained??? Or explored??

But anyway, let’s talk about the Master. Both versions. 

To truly comment on how Bad this was I need to recap where both versions were left off in their respective timelines. Gomez was at a point where her Master had seemingly come to a consensus agreement to try out being good (see: the episode with the execution flashback scenes, Doctor rescue, vault opening, etc). We’ve been put through her waverings, culminating in pretty strong hints that some bit of goodness was sinking in (eg, the “why am I crying” bit). 

(Side note: the entire “Goodness Rehab” plot line was also a bit shit but hey, I was wiling to roll with it)

 So when we reach the finale, Gomez is snarky but seemingly in it for genuine reasons. Of course that could have been disproved, but that’s where were at with her when Simm’s Master comes into the picture. 

Now Simm’s role in this is where things truly nosedive. Last time we had Simm’s Master was End of Time. You know, the episode where some things came to light and a semblence of consensus was reached between him and the Doctor that ended with him stepping in front of the Doctor when Rassilon moved to kill him, so the Master was taken into the time lock instead? 

That episode. 

I’m all for the Master having convoluted plots, but THIS plot? TEN years to make this happen, all to be easily turned against him in three minutes of screen time? What was the point? Also, how did he get there?? In true details, ones that actually take into account the significance of Gallifrey. 

That aside, the episode frames it that Simm’s true plan is just to kill the Doctor. Apart from the fact that that could have been achieved in far easier ways, that has NEVER been the real intention on a past plot. The Game has always been hurt, and make a point, using other people’s lives to make that point when possible (even his own, in the end of Season 3, when the only thing left to do to truly hurt the Doctor and “win” is to take himself away from the Doctor through death). That’s one of the key things about these characters, that neither has the courage nor the true desire to kill the other. Even when they could, or should, or claim to want to, they lack the ability to end each other. That’s been commented on a few times throughout the show. At the worst of times they allow the other harm through omission of action but that’s the closest they come. 

So we are already starting on a weak point. 

Then we get a few scenes of off flirting between Masters which is all fun and well, but let’s be honest. Although the Master probably would love themselves in all sorts of ways, they would absolutely HATE their past selves. Because each represents a different method of failure; failure of individual plans and rulerships and above all, failure to truly take the Doctor (either through capture or consensus, the lines have been blurred with them there for a while now). 

So I can’t be that into Masters across regenerations getting along that well. 

Then we get one of the biggest crimes of all: This awaited multi master episode is...actually pretty boring. Having very little screen time of either Master as they mostly just...hang out, while others are preparing? Did their plans and dual presence really mean so little to the Doctor? For a Master episode, this lacked a whole lot of interaction between the Doctor and the Master(s), and relatively NO intellectual teamwork. 

So then Simm Master makes it clear that he won’t stick around, and that bothers me because in times where the Doctor’s life is at stake, the Master is nothing if not APATHETIC. Gomez Master makes a good show of wanting to stay, but then doesn’t. This type of apathy has been bothering me throughout this season but it was never a problem until the finale, when it was really inexcusable. My largest problem with the Master this series is that they seem to be simplified for public consumption, and their terrible, wonderful, vicious, epic. life-consuming dynamic with the Doctor has been made into something nearly trivial. The idea that (ideally) Gomez Master was supposed to become Good and then go have her own adventures in space and time clashes with the character’s entire basis. Gomez says at one point “my whole life doesn’t revolve around you you know” and that’s the problem with this season’s take on the Master in a nutshell, because you know what?

The Master’s life  DOES revolve around the Doctor. THAT’S THE POINT.

That has been proven through over 50 years of show, where the Master’s intentions have always been focused on the Doctor overwhelmingly. The Master himself even says so, in the 8th Doctor. That’s what makes the dynamic interesting; the over-whelming central role they play in the other’s life, despite conflict and differences. The Master’s character HAD to be killed off so often as it was because if they ever reached agreement it would be unthinkable that they would part ways. 

So moving on, we get Gomez stabbing Simm (why? why not just let him fly off?) and making it known that she’ll go help the Doctor. To which Simm throws his fit and shots Gomez, rather dying than “stand with the Doctor”. 

Firstly, standing with the Doctor has been the Master’s goal since the character’s initiation. Simm’s anger makes sense in the season 3 finale, and in End of Time, but that’s a long rant for another day, and those factors have been addressed before this finale’s episode. So his anti-Doctor sentiment to THIS extent has little basis, other than to simplify the character into an obvious ‘villain’ role. 

But worse, if there’s one thing the Master WON’T EVER DO, it’s kill himself. Wanna know how I know? Because the Doctor himself says so in season 3. Of course the Master lets himself die afterwards to make a point, but that was FAKE dying as a means to an end, dying with a pre-set plan of coming back to life shortly afterwards. The Master is nothing if not unintentionally self-defeating but he would NEVER kill himself on purpose. 

Until this episode, I guess??

Side note, Gomez being killed by Simm makes the entire plotline of Goodness Rehab pretty useless, considering her newfound sense of morality is never acted upon in a way that’s seen by anyone else other than Simm. So...why was that a thing again?

I don’t know, I could go on and on honestly, but I’ll stop there. I took a chance on this season, and it seemed promising for a while, but I’ll take this as my queue to duck out again. I am glad some people still love the show, and I hope it goes on forever really. But the Master is my all-time favorite character and at this point I think he has been simplified into something black and white, palatable for general audiences, giving them an easy villain rather than a physical representation of the Doctor’s fallibility and weaknesses.

And to be honest, I’d rather just opt out with the Master’s character alive in my mind, rather than watch that happen. 

[rosencrypt]

I saw Doctor Who! Semi-liveblog under the cut:

- Ah, here are the descendants of that expedition upship they mentioned last episode. How did the Cyber patients get here?

- OK, so why don't the farm people chain up the Cyber patients further from the house? Or lock them in a vault, or chuck them underwater or smth

- you can't have a cyberman story without a good ol' base under siege

- John Simm is SO MUCH BETTER when he's not having to shout about drums and be Wacky or Manic every 5 minutes. Just shows what a wasted opportunity those RTD Master episodes were :/

- Oh huh, I didn't think we were going to get an explanation for Simm being around. Raises a few more questions about just why Gallifrey's reappearance was so badly handled, tho

- does the Conscience of Marinus REALLY count as an instance of the Cybermen, Moffat? Actually, I just did some research into this - apparently there are some comics and novels that suggest two or more out of Mondas, Planet 14, and Marinus are actually the same place. The Doctor lists them separately here, though, so presumably that’s not what Moffat’s talking about. He’s probably just making something up. Which, to be fair, is what they did with Planet 14 in The Invasion

- Burning? Is that a Planet of Fire reference? I don't remember the Master being drowned or stabbed tho

- oh no, call back to Last of the Time Lords. Why would you do that :(

- I'm loving Missy's chaotic nature here. She’s so Red

- being rescued from Cybermen via rope ladder from a tall building? Yay, Invasion reference! :)

- noo, why is Bill back now. I have nothing against her, but does cyber conversion mean ANYTHING these days? Also,if she’s grabbed the ladder, shouldn’t that just have torn it off rather than holding back the whole shuttle

- Awww, Nardole did a cute thing

- 2-week time skip? why??? Stop doing that Moffat. I know you love randomly skipping over things, but in this case would there be any difference at all if you didn’t? as far as I can see the only thing this accomplishes is that you don’t have to show the Doctor explaining anything to the locals and you can have Nardole ordering people around with no explanation, at the cost of killing any sense of urgency. I don’t think that’s a fair trade, tbh, and I’d have enjoyed seeing the Masters maybe try to take command of the farms or smth

- Right, so Bill is still perfectly cogent and cyber conversion actually DOES mean less than nothing. great. way to completely defang the Cybermen, Moffat

- It’s been 2 weeks and the Doctor STILL hasn’t been to see Bill? she's just spent 10 years waiting for you, the least you could do is say hi

- oh right, so Cyberbill HASN'T actually been de-cybertised. That’s something at least. Nice callback to Dalek Clara there too

- oh, jelly babies again. Where did he get them? What purpose does this bit serve? It’s just a reference for reference’s sake, and it’s not even a clever subtle reference, since 4′s taste for jelly babies is so extremely well-known

- I feel this scene would be a lot more effective if we were actually seeing Cyberbill. Also, why hasn't the conversion brainwashing thing worked on her, anyway? If she hasn’t been de-cybertised, why is she being all independent and emotion-feeling?

- "You are..so strong" well even more so now, Doctor

- srsly?? she's just resisting through force of will? that's...disappointing. it was bullshit in the monk episodes and it doesn’t make any more senes here

- "You can't be angry any more" - like, you literally are incapable of anger. or should be. how are you doing that? maybe these ones just haven't got around to removing their emotions yet

- yay, Simm is still a horrible misogynist. What a useful and necessary character trait

- "They come after the children" oh, are we going to be seeing Cyberbabies? that's grim

- "less to throw away" - so what, they're putting doing the Davies thing of putting the brains into ready-made cyber bodies? That's very disappointing, and also at odds with the gradual transformation body-horror we saw in the last episode.

- OK, Simm, we know you hate women, you can find some other characteristics now. For a species/civilisation supposedly above petty gender concerns, he seems remarkably not

- how fast does time move on the farm floor relative to the city one? it should take days/weeks/etc. for the Cybermen to travel from the city, which if nothing else gives the defenders plenty of time between waves to prepare

- Right, so the Doctor is defending a settlement from technologically-advanced invaders. This is. A bit similar to Time of the Doctor, tbh

- if the Cybermen have 'evolved', why do they have both old and new Cybermen forms?

- oh the child has a name. Good to know.

- Cybermen with rocket-boots is still a stupid idea, but I'll concede that in this one shot it looks OK

- What do you mean, you don't know what you see in him?? Don’t lie, you've always been just as interested, Simm.

- Eh, are you SURE the Master's going to die, Doctor? For all the times they've done it so far, I wouldn't expect it to stick

- Oh obviously she leaves, so she can come back later and save him

- Urgh, back to 'upgrading' :P what happened to “we will survive”?

- So what, the Doctor doesn't like guns, but he's fine with explosives? Bit of a mixed message there, eh?

- are the Cybermen going to actually do anything here? It’s difficult to be afraid of them when we see them being constantly blown up

- Why is it the Masters so scared of a few Cybermen, anyway? They're smart enough to have taken control of the whole ship in minutes.

- Oh, the other woman has a name too

- "Down to the cellar", you mean, closer to the Cybermen? Somebody didn't think this through. For that matter, why are the Cybermen emerging so far from the house? They can arrive literally wherever, so shouldn’t they be coming up through the floorboards?

- Isn't looking after a load of humans pretty much what you've been doing since, like, forever, Doctor?

- "Oh great, so SHE's allowed to explode!" Nardole continues to be the best, especially since the Masters were sidelined

- Speaking of whom...she's going to force his regeneration, isn't she? Bye bye, Simm. We hardly knew you (in an actual decent story that DIDN'T require you to go ON and ON about those goDdAMN dRUUmMms)

- Oh, they're not going to...GOOD, I was so worried Bill was going to profess her love for the Doctor

- More of this 'oh welcome to being a woman' stuff. You know, the more you harp on about gender, Moffat, the more your insistence that it's no big thing is POINTEDLY BELIED.

- "I will never stand with the Doctor!" -what?? you do that all the time. Hell, you stood with 10 in End of Time

- "Don't try to regenerate!" I'm very much not a fan of the New Series (and esp. Moffat) take on regeneration as a voluntary thing/special attack/etc. I'll concede it's a nice thematic story point, tho - even when the Master isn't just literally shot in the back by themself, they're always sabotaging themself with reckless ambition. Oh, it makes an interesting contrast to the Master's previous obsession with survival (...except when the plot dictated otherwise, as in the fantastically OOC 'regeneration suppression' thing in Last of the Time Lords), tho. A characteristic they share with the Cybermen, in fact. Someone should maybe write a story featuring both of them, with that as one of the themes.

- Actually, come to think of it, that's a central conflict of Doctor Who - most of the villainous/antagonistic factions are fundamentally scared of death and obsessed with their own survival and superiority (the Master, Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians/Sea Devils), in contrast with the Doctor, who accepts his mortality and acts in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition

- Why is the Doctor crowing about his previous victories over the Cybermen here? This lot have nothing to do with them. Is he just trying to confuse them by talking about planets they’ve never heard of?

- Shouldn't that helmet blast have bypassed regeneration? Being shot like 3 times should have killed him outright.

- Aww, does that mean Missy is dead too? Eh, they've survived worse

- 10 minutes left. Wonder where they'll go from here

- What even happened to Bill? She's going to come and carry him to the TARDIS, I assume

- Oh, Bill's girlfriend came back! That's nice. Now she gets to go to space lesbian heaven. Sort of like Clara and whatshername. Is that the series' first on-screen wlw kiss?

- This whole tears thing doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but sure, let's go with it. How did Heather and Bill get into the TARDIS, tho

- if Heather is the ur-pilot, she should go and crew that Silence ship from The Lodger. NO I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN, MOFFAT

- So how does this tie into the bookends in the snow? If he's already unconscious, is he going to get his second wind?

- ah, so he is.

- What do you mean, you don't want to change again?? Like, sure Capaldi, stick around as long as you can, please, but I do think the Doctor is making a bit much of this. It’s like 10 and 11 all over again :P

- Oh, hello David Bradley! Nice to see you again. No idea how this fits into your timeline, tho. This scene doesn’t match up with any of your stories, especially not The 10th Planet.

[cupcakeshakesnake]

Watching Face The Raven for the first time

-Okaaayyyy... I’m slightly worried because apparently something big happens here.

-Twelve’s adorable little snort.

-It’s all fun and games until the phone rings...

-Wassup Rigsy, you, the artsy guy!

-Countdowns always make people nervous

-But what if it’s like the number of seconds left until your next fart

-Or the number of dust particles you have yet to accidentally consume today

-”Did you make this human?”

-”She’s better than that... She’s brilliant.”  Awwww

-”Bring the new human - No, don’t bring the new human, I’ll just get distracted.”

-Oh boy

-THE CARDS ARE BACK

-526 minutes would be about... 8 hours and 46 minutes.

-CLARA DON’T FALL OFF

-OH GREAT SHE’S IMITATING ELEVEN NOW

-Well at least she ain’t hanging by her ankles

-WTF Clara do you have safety frigidity

-Count what? Buildings?

-”Pick up all my most annoying stuff.”

-DUN DUN DUN

-wtf happened WTF DID SHE DIE IS THAT IT

-What’s Eddard Stark doing in DOctor Who

-AJSGFASDHK WTF

-WHAT THE FUCK IT’S ASHIELDA

-What? Why??

-Ashielda you douchebag

-STOP IT WITH THE EARRAPE BRICKS

-How did eight hours pass so quickly, why does he only have 50 minutes now

-The fuck’s with the Judoon and the Sontarans and the aliens

-That lamp looks uncannily like a memory worm’s inside it

-Clara please don’t get distracted...

-Aw, it’s an Ood fixing a Cyberman.

-That’s adorable.

-Wow, that’s creepy.

-Ashielda you douche.

-The raven...

-FORESHADOWING

-Wait, that guy was a Cyberman? Or is she just making a comparison?

-That’s a long scream...

-R.I.P. Random dude.

-He saved his wife (presumably).

-”I’m good cop, you’re bad cop.”  “No we don’t have-- Can I be the good cop?”  “Doctor, we’ve discussed this. Your face.”

-okay you two are acting like kids

-It’s an impressive feat considering one of you’s in her twenties and the other is a 2000 year old time traveling alien

-Ok thank goodness his family is somewhat okay

-Dammit Clara

-I have a bad feeling about this

-For every minute that passes by from now on, I will write the above sentence, only more and more emphasized to show Han’s accent, until I have somethnig else to remark upon.

-I have a bad feeling about this.

-I have a baaad feeling about this.

-I, have a baaad feelin’ about this.

-HOLY SHIT

-Magical tattoo transfer, sick beats included.

-Her collar splits at the back of the neck too?! That’s one of the biggest plot twists I’ve ever encountered.

-Wait, what?

-She literally has eyes on the back of her head.

-Okay, I’ll leave now...

-The bass beat sort of things in the music. That’s new. I don’t know what to call it, the deep thump-thump beneath the orchestra. But it’s new and not bad.

-DUN DUN DUUUUN the alien person is alive.

-Can’t he sonic the keyhole?

-ASHIELDA DAMMIT

-Well, whoever ‘they’ are, they don’t sound like Daleks for once.  Like seriously. Who stole the TARDIS? The Daleks! Who messed up the timeline? The Daleks! Who stole the cake? IT’S THE FRIGGING DALEKS OF COURSE, EVERY TIME!

-But can’t Ashielda just remove Clara’s chronolock?

-Maybe she can’t?

-I don’t know why but for a moment I pictured Clara going ‘okay lol’ and chilling out

-”I’ll bring the Daleks, I’ll bring the Cybermen-”  what

-Wow, he hasn’t been this desperate since Magician’s Apprentice.

-”The Doctor is no longer here, you are stuck with me!”  Oh boy.

-shit

-Is Clara gonna be the first companion to part by death

-”Maybe this is it, maybe this is why I kept taking all those risks, kept pushing it”  Breaking News: Clara Oswald Was Suicidal All Along

-shiiit

-shit

-Just look at the Doctor, he’s so devastated

-dammit

-Doesn’t Clara have a family, isn’t she a teacher, doesn’t she have friends, what will her family do, what would the class think?

-SHIT!

-SHIIT!

-SHIT!

-DON’T DO THIS TO ME

-THIS ISN’T EVEN MOFFAT

-shit

-Meanwhile the crow is like ‘Oh I see you’re making a farewell speech, guess I’ll just wait here on your doorstep’

-What if residents of that town just freaked out every time they saw a raven or a crow even if it was a common one from the streets

-shit shit shit shit shit

-shit

-wtf why

-why

-I wasn’t ready for that

-well shit

-she dead??

-she dead?!?!?!?!?

-REALLY BBC

-I WASN’T READY FOR THAT

-They just killed her off?? Just like that???

-Wtf BBC??

-Is she really dead?

-I refuse to believe it

-Okay, everything is fine, she is gonna come back next episode and say ‘what happened lol’

-e v e r y t h i n g i s p e r f e c t l y f i n e

N O T   O K A Y

-”I’ll do my best... But I strongly advise you to keep out of my way. You’ll find that it’s a very small universe when I’m angry with you.”  Oh boi

He pissed

-Even the end credits narrator sounds stressed

That is beautiful...

-SHIT THE TRAILER

-THE HEAVEN SENT TRAILER

-SHIT